Did You Know

"Trial By Jury" is set in a court of law, the original setting being based by Gilbert on the Clerkenwell Court in which he had appeared during his early, brief and unremunerative career as a lawyer.

The bare bones for Trial appeared in the 11th April 1868 edition of Fun, a magazine to which Gilbert was a regular contributor. In 1875, Richard D'Oyly Carte commissioned Gilbert & Sullivan to produce a short opera. By then, Gilbert had turned the original idea into a full-scale libretto which proved the perfect basis for Sullivan's music.